NERD WARS: Sonic The Hedgehog Vs Super Mario

By: Michael Lee and Chris Akins

Sonic the Hedgehog. Blue. Spiky. Videogame icon. Has the ability to run faster than the speed of sound and can curl into a ball in order to smash into enemies at supersonic speeds. He was designed with Sega's blue color scheme and Michael Jackson's style in mind. To many, he's a hero, especially those who grew up with the Sega, as he was it's sole savior in the video game wars of the 1990's. His original video game was similar to the very first Super Mario Bros. game, if that game was on speed. He fights mad scientists, giant robots, and evil versions of himself. Did I mention he could turn into a werewolf, a super saiyan, and even a f*cking golden knight! Sonic is the literal definition of bad ass.

Even with all these upgrades, Sonic is nothing without his fellow friends and foes. First up is Amy Rose, who is his self-proclaimed girlfriend. Sonic's friend and rival, Knuckles, is a red echidna and one of the strongest characters in the series. Miles "Tails" Prower is Sonic's best friend and can fly with the help of his three-tails. Dr. Robotnik, later redubbed Dr. Eggman, is Sonic's arch enemy, who sets out to acquire all 7 chaos emeralds and rule the world. A robotic version of Sonic created by Dr. Eggman was introduced in Sonic CD, Metal Sonic. Shadow the Hedgehog was created by Robotnik's grandfather as the "ultimate life form". He likes guns. Alot. Silver the Hedgehog is essentially the terminator of the series, a Hedgehog from the future who sets out to kill the f*ck out of Sonic. Then there is the E-100 Series, a group of robots created by Doctor Eggman, who uses them in his quest to conquer the world. There are a whole bunch of other characters too, some friendly, others deranged, which help out/obstruct Sonic's quest for peace. They range from frogs, to weasels, to armadillos, to hawks. I'd go into further detail but there are just too many badass characters to talk about.

Super Mario

Mario is the biggest character for one of the biggest game companies in history. Every fabric of his being is iconic, from his moustache to his overalls. He can throw fire balls, sprout wings and fly, and even turn into the f*cling T-1000 from Terminator 2 all with a simple hat change. Mario is so big that even his side characters have exploded in popularity. Do you know what a goomba is? Your damn right you do! He's the gumdrop who caused you so much pain when you didn't jump at the right time! Does anyone (who isn't a diehard fan) know what Eggman's henchman are called? Hell no, cause no one gives a sh*t.

Mario first appeared in the 1981 Nintendo game, Donkey Kong. Since then he's appeared in over 200 different video games, the latest being New Super Mario Brothers Wii. But let's take a look at his early work: Donkey Kong was a game about a carpenter (yes, Mario was originally a carpenter, which explains the hammer.) trying to save a princess from a giant gorilla who climbs to the top of a tower, in a very King King fashion, and throws barrels down to stop our hero. The concept was simple, scale the tower without getting hit by a barrel or fire (that's right, Mario was scaling a towering inferno) and the climb up to nab the girl. Rinse and repeat. While the idea was simple, it's effect was not. The game was far before it's time and swept arcades across the world. It is still widely played today and even inspired a very good documentary movie called the King of Kong. The popularity soon spawned a new game with Mario finally being given credit as the title character in Mario Bros. These games, while individually great, are often forgotten to even be Mario games because of his many many other ones which have somehow managed to improve with every generation, while the only good Sonic games were on the orginal Sega consoles.

Mario has taken many forms over the years and can do so using different items. Early Mario games, like Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World, introduced such items as the super mushroom that makes Mario double in size, the fire flower that gives him the ability to chuck fire balls, and the power star that gives him invincibility and the power to kill enemies by touching them, like the grim f*cking reaper. Later games introduced animal suits and the the tranfer of abilities through hats. The raccoon hat was one of the earliest animal themed abilities and gave Mario the power of flight, but others were the frog suit, the bee suit, and most recently, the penguin suit. The power hat novelty was introduced in Super Mario 64 (which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest video games of all time). It featured 3 different question marked boxes that distributed 3 completely different hats. The red box contained the winged hat, which replaced the raccoon tail in it's flying ability; the green box had the metal hat, which turned Mario into what appeared to be liquid metal, and the blue box had the vanishing hat that allowed Mario to pass through mother f*cking walls! I'm trying to mention as many abilities as possible, but in all honesty, he just has too many. So I'm gonna list a few more and you can list any I forget in the comments:
Poison Mushroom
Tanooki Suit
Hammer Bros. Suit
Power Carrot (bunny ears)
Boo Mario
Helicopter Hat
Super Cape
Hammer Time
Ice Flower
FLUDD
And all those Paper Mario abilities relating to paper.

Sonic may be most popluar video game character in the UK, but in America, Mario branches outside of video games and is more recognizable to children than Micky Mouse (people actually spent money to have this survey conducted). The series has also sold Over 210 million copies as of 2009, making it the best selling game franchise of all time. ALL TIME! Not just retro either Sonic (and for the record, Sonic got best selling retro game cause all his new games suck ass). Mario also has 7 Guinness World Records and was voted the most popular video game character in Japan, outranking Cloud Strife and Solid Snake (and they f*cking love those guys!).

As mentioned before, Mario's supporting cast is almost as well-known as the mustachioed plummer himself (little known fact, Mario actually hates being called a plummer). Luigi is Mario's green suited and ironically taller younger brother. He has assisted Mario more than any other character in the series and sports a few interesting abilities of his own, including green fire. He actually stepped out of his brothers shadow and had a successful game of his own in Luigi's Mansion, which was essentially a cross between Mario and Ghostbusters. Peach, or Princess Toadstool, reigns over the iconic Mushroom Kingdom and maintains a very one-sided romantic relationship with our hero. She has been kidnapped enough to have Amber Alert changed to Blonde Bitch Alert. But despite her persistant objection to installing a security system, Peach has gained enough popularity to earn her own game as well. Other friendlies include Toad, the mushroom hatted midgets of the kingdom; and Yoshi, Mario's lovable dino-pet with several games to boot. On the other side of the spectrum lies Mario's villains. First is King Koopa himself, Bowser. Bowser is the mutated dragon turtle that time and time again, cockblocks our red-hatted hero. He's got an army of Koopas, Goombas, Shyguys, Dry Bones, and those mother f*cking Hammer Brothers that do everything in their power to make sure Mario doesn't spoil Bowser's "alone time" with Peach. Less menacing is Wario, the parallel opposite of Mario. Though sometimes turning out to be a hero in the end, Wario is more bent on wealth than kidnapping. He even has a very tall, semi retarded brother named Waluigi. I honestly don't know when Waluigi showed up though, he just sort of appeared amungst the many Mario Parties. Then you got Baby Bowser, who is in some ways more evil than his father (the mother is unknown but is most likely Peach, as a result of her many rapings). This little guy went so far as to disguise himself up as Dark Mario, and frame the real Mario for destroying a city. As a matter of fact, he's one of the only main villains that targets Mario directly, as most are just interested in the princess. Lastly, we have the original Mario villain; Donkey Kong. DK was the original kidnapper of a young woman named Pauline, but the rejection (and bitch slap from Mario) sent him into a spiraling depression in which he returned to jungle to find himself, and while there, realized the virtues of being a hero. But that's another story altogether. Once again, do not scold me for not listing all of the little side characters like Birdo or Toadette. That's what comments are for.

Now Sonic may have nabbed the comic book market, but Mario swept the Internet. Parody videos like Dumbass Mario and Inglorious Plummers are downright hilarious but these fan made videos also branch into dramatic. Super Mario Bros Z plays out like an action cartoon, far superior than anything Sonic could dish out and the video link in the above paragraph takes you to an episode of There will be Brawl, which is a f*cking work of art. Seriously, if you take anything outta this article, let it be that series. It's amazing. A theatrical movie was also released sometime ago, but it is not to be spoken of as it was just... Well not Mario. It's only contribution was being the first movie ever based off an existing video game. But Mario's extra media doesn't just include videos and movies, but can be considered to be his numerous sports and racing games that have been extremely well recieved, especially in comparrison to Sonics attempt at a racing game.

Also if they ever fought, I imagine it would play out something like this. And if you were too lazy to watch the link, it basically consisted of the two beating the sh*t out of each other until Mario inevitably destroyed Sonic.

 

 

Michael Lee and Chris Akins are writers for Nerdism Comics, and should've wrote this about three months ago when they said they were gonna put out a Nerd War a month. You can write to them at Nerdismcomics@yahoo.com

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